Community Kitchens: SHGs Combatting Hunger During the Pandemic

When India announced a nationwide lockdown in March 2020 to contain the spread of COVID-19, the immediate health crisis quickly morphed into something equally urgent – a hunger crisis. Daily wage labourers, migrant workers, the homeless, and countless poor households suddenly found themselves without income or access to food. In this moment of disruption, an unexpected force stepped up to fill the gap: women-led Self-Help Groups (SHGs). Drawing on decades of grassroots organising, these collectives set up community kitchens across the country, feeding lakhs of people daily and proving that development administration is most effective when it is rooted in the community itself.

The hunger crisis that followed the lockdown 🔗

The 21-day national lockdown announced on 24 March 2020, later extended multiple times, brought economic activity to a near-complete standstill. Informal workers, who make up a large share of the workforce, were the worst hit. With 1.3 billion people placed under an unprecedented 40-day lockdown, women’s SHGs emerged as a critical force in the country’s rural districts, producing masks, running kitchens, and delivering essentials.

What made SHGs uniquely suited to this crisis was their embedded presence. The existence of SHG networks in every Gram Panchayat, along with their close ties to local self-government institutions, made them a natural choice for running community kitchens and “Didi’s cafes” during the lockdown. Unlike external agencies that needed time to map vulnerabilities, SHG women already knew who in their village was elderly, who had lost work, who was quarantined, and who had children going hungry.

Community kitchens across 75 districts 🔗

The scale of the SHG response was remarkable. Within weeks of the lockdown, a vast network of community kitchens was operational. According to the Ministry of Rural Development, around 10,000 community kitchens were set up across five states – Bihar, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha – spread over 75 districts, serving meals twice a day to nearly 70,000 vulnerable individuals.

These kitchens were not charity operations imposed from above. They were run by women who knew the local language, understood local food habits, and could adapt menus to what was regionally available and culturally acceptable. By late July 2020, the scale had grown significantly. By 24 July 2020, close to 12,000 community kitchens across 75 districts of three states – Jharkhand, Kerala, and Odisha – had collectively served around six crore meals.

Why SHGs could move faster than the state 🔗

One reason the community kitchen model scaled so rapidly was that SHGs already had trust capital in their villages. Unlike formal government agencies that often struggle with last-mile delivery, SHGs were the last mile. They had bank accounts, shared savings, federated structures at the cluster and block levels, and experience in handling small grants. When emergency funds were released by state governments and the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, the money could flow directly into systems that were already functioning.

Kerala’s Kudumbashree: the gold standard 🔗

If one SHG network became the face of the community kitchen movement, it was Kerala’s Kudumbashree. With more than four million members organised through neighbourhood groups, Kudumbashree had the density and discipline to operate at scale. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan announced on 25 March 2020 that community kitchens would open in every panchayat, and the machinery swung into action almost overnight.

Kudumbashree, the state’s women community network, worked with local self-governing bodies to run the community kitchens, with at least one planned for every panchayat in rural areas and every ten wards in urban areas. The kitchens prepared hot meals – typically simple fare like rice with curries – which were packed and home-delivered to the needy, the elderly, and those under home quarantine.

Serving the quarantined and the stranded 🔗

The Kudumbashree model was notable for how it integrated quarantine care into the food response. Instead of forcing quarantined individuals to break isolation to fetch food, dedicated teams delivered meals to their doorsteps. Special community kitchens were opened for migrant workers – known locally as “guest workers” – and the kitchens expanded to offer home delivery and take-away counters even in remote corners of the state. Over 16,000 Kudumbashree farming collectives supported these kitchens by donating more than 100 metric tons of agricultural produce.

The cumulative impact was substantial. According to the World Health Organization, the Community Kitchen initiative, delivered by the Local Self Government Department with support from Kudumbashree, distributed more than 86 lakh free meals to labourers, those in quarantine and isolation, the destitute, and other needy persons.

Tripura: formal contracts with experienced SHGs 🔗

While Kerala leveraged an already dense SHG network, Tripura chose a more contractual approach. The state government identified SHGs that had prior experience running catering businesses or cooking at scale and formalised arrangements with them. In Tripura, community kitchen contracts were awarded by the state government to SHGs with existing catering businesses or experience in large-scale cooking.

This approach is worth noticing from a development administration lens. It shows how state capacity can be augmented by outsourcing execution to community organisations that already have the skills, while the state retains the coordination and financing role. It is a model that sidesteps the classic bureaucratic bottlenecks of procurement and tendering during an emergency.

Odisha’s Mission Shakti and the integrated response 🔗

Odisha had one of the largest SHG networks in India going into the pandemic. The state’s Mission Shakti programme, launched on International Women’s Day in 2001, had over two decades of groundwork behind it. Mission Shakti had organised around 70 lakh women members into approximately six lakh Women Self-Help Groups, federated at Gram Panchayat, block, and district levels.

When the lockdown began, this network was redeployed for relief. In Odisha, the 70 lakh women across 6 lakh Mission Shakti SHGs mobilised to provide dry ration, groceries, and cooked food through community kitchens, with around 45,000 people being fed daily under Mission Shakti kitchens.

Going beyond meals: eggs and sanitary pads 🔗

What sets the Odisha and Chhattisgarh response apart is that it did not treat food as the only priority. SHGs in these states recognised that a lockdown creates silent crises too – loss of protein nutrition for children and pregnant women, and a shortage of menstrual hygiene products for adolescent girls.

In Odisha and Chhattisgarh, SHG women distributed eggs alongside Take Home Rations, reaching children under five, pregnant women, and lactating mothers. In the same states, SHGs drew on the Vulnerability Reduction Fund to ensure that adolescent girls continued to have access to clean sanitary pads during the lockdown. This kind of gender-sensitive response is almost impossible to design from a central planning cell – it comes from women understanding what other women need.

Jharkhand’s Mukhya Mantri Didi Kitchen 🔗

Perhaps the most structured state-level response came from Jharkhand, which formally launched the Mukhya Mantri Didi Kitchen (MMDK) scheme. The initiative institutionalised what many other states were doing informally. Jharkhand launched the Mukhya Mantri Didi Kitchen to provide free food to the neediest – the differently-abled, children, and the poorest households – with about 4,185 community kitchens running across Panchayats.

The model scaled quickly. Chief Minister Hemant Soren announced that more than 12 lakh people were being fed every day through 6,628 Mukhya Mantri Didi Kitchen units and community kitchens at police stations, and that other states were beginning to adopt the Jharkhand model. Behind each of these kitchens were SHG women mobilised by the Jharkhand State Livelihood Promotion Society, an arm of the rural development department.

Reaching tribal and remote populations 🔗

Jharkhand’s tribal communities, historically the most vulnerable to food insecurity, were a particular focus. To address rising hunger and malnutrition, the Jharkhand government established the Mukhya Mantri Didi Kitchen – community kitchens run by women self-help groups that provided food during the lockdown to the most deprived households. For tribal families in Santhal Pargana, Palamu, Chatra, and Latehar, this often meant the difference between eating and not eating on a given day.

A quiet revolution in development administration 🔗

Looking back at this episode, the SHG-led community kitchens offer several lessons that matter well beyond the pandemic.

Decentralisation actually works in emergencies 🔗

One of the oldest debates in public administration is whether centralised or decentralised systems handle crises better. The community kitchen story sits firmly on the side of decentralisation. State governments set policies and released funds, but the actual cooking, identification of beneficiaries, and delivery happened at the panchayat and ward level. This meant fewer bottlenecks, faster response, and better targeting.

Women’s collectives are development infrastructure 🔗

A crucial takeaway is that SHGs are not just welfare recipients or microcredit groups – they are public infrastructure. In over 90 per cent of India’s districts, SHG women were producing facemasks, running community kitchens, delivering essential supplies, raising awareness on hygiene, and countering misinformation. A country that invests in SHGs during peacetime gains a rapid-response network during crisis.

Convergence between schemes made it possible 🔗

The community kitchens did not appear in a vacuum. They were financed through a convergence of programmes – the National Rural Livelihoods Mission’s Vulnerability Reduction Fund, state schemes like Mission Shakti and the Jharkhand State Livelihood Promotion Society, and local panchayat funds. The Vulnerability Reduction Fund was used across north-eastern states and others to prepare food kits containing staples, cooking oil, and personal hygiene items for the most vulnerable households.

Challenges that remain 🔗

It would be incomplete to tell this story without honestly noting the gaps. The SHG response was stronger in states with already-dense networks – Kerala, Odisha, Jharkhand – and weaker where SHG penetration was thin. Many SHGs ran into working capital issues, with members often dipping into their own savings to begin operations before reimbursements came through. Volunteer fatigue set in as the lockdown stretched from weeks into months. And post-pandemic, sustaining these kitchens as permanent food security infrastructure has proven harder than activating them during the emergency.

Still, the experience has left an imprint on how states view SHGs. Several state governments have now built SHG roles into their disaster management frameworks, and initiatives like Odisha’s Aahar centres and Kerala’s Janakeeya Hotels have continued in modified forms beyond the pandemic.

A case study worth remembering 🔗

The community kitchen episode during the COVID-19 lockdown is a textbook example of how development administration works best when it blends state financing, local government coordination, and community-led execution. It also quietly corrected a long-standing assumption – that crisis response requires top-down command. On the contrary, the fastest, most culturally appropriate, and most dignified help often came not from uniforms and convoys but from women in saris, cooking rice and dal in a panchayat hall and knocking gently on a quarantined neighbour’s door.

What do you think? Should India formally institutionalise SHG-run community kitchens as permanent food security infrastructure, the way mid-day meals are for schoolchildren? And how can states with weaker SHG networks replicate what Kerala, Odisha, and Jharkhand have demonstrated is possible?

References

1. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2020/04/11/women-self-help-groups-combat-covid19-coronavirus-pandemic-india
2. https://rural.nic.in/en/press-release/community-kitchens-run-shg-women-provide-food-most-poor-and-vulnerable-rural-areas
3. https://theprint.in/opinion/unsung-women-helping-rural-india-fight-covid-rural-ministry-secretary/481166/
4. https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/inside-kerala-community-kitchen-during-coronavirus-lockdown-121325
5. https://frompoverty.oxfam.org.uk/how-a-womens-organization-became-chief-architects-of-the-covid-19-response-in-southern-india/
6. https://www.who.int/india/news-room/feature-stories/detail/responding-to-covid-19—learnings-from-kerala
7. https://missionshakti.odisha.gov.in/about-us/overview
8. https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/other-states-adopting-j-khand-s-didi-kitchen-concept-soren-120042200385_1.html
9. https://en.gaonconnection.com/jharkhand-hunger-malnutrition-tribal-covid19-pandemic-mid-day-meal-poverty-health-nutrition-migrant-workers/